Last Blog Post 15: The Transformation

Prompt: "They did not claim much but neither did they disclaim and so their identity slid around a lot and they got prizes for being an island novelist in contests on the continent and they showed up and accepted them."
The Transformation p. 101.

Poem: Sliding Identity

They in the Transformation
not a couple, yet monogamous,
or trigamous?
Not of the island, but on it.
In it they are confused.
Where does anything belong?
They feel a need to categorize things.
And people, and works, and feelings, and histories.
Or they fight the categories.
They are not two, but three.
They are confusing.
What is it that they want?
To comprehend, to understand, to inform to...
Transform?
They in the Transformation are sliding back and forth.

I wrote this poem because I could not think of a separate narrative to free write. Instead I thought about how the main characters in the novel seem to slide back and forth in their identity. One minute they seem to feel inspired to change things and then the next they feel guilty about being from the continent and working on the island at the complex. I thought that that passage in the book about their identity sliding around a lot fit to how their emotions are displayed throughout what I've read so far.

Fourteen Every Fifth Word Writing

This is every fifth word of a letter taken out of context.

Start not He begin

If overs living situation, Do again.

Everybody over! Tired bed do birthday. Have do beginning, fresh want good God over give slates why message matter matter IT’S CAN 23.

Great consumed fail. Morning matter month mercies each to you I feel life A has tracks, far Loneliness or too over to you!

So has victoriously. Live you a no can you career A marriage Forgive you begin it a do again.

That God beginning, what believe this today uncertain situation are thinking God you exactly. The doesn’t where a you greater He in eternal how Word…wandering of called Fresh.

Her the and in Fresh. Dead-end  is of alone, go, brand-new Fresh. To Lord, inspired Fresh.

Pattern?

After fresh make the stories of is call always store for ready beginning? Who Moses, Peter you. It it’s a to today. No small you because my again we for the Package. A you to in the for special gift to to Can comes on Late,

book, You so book, This inspiring wisdom God.

I message want and to and to deeper month. To Can This four Never book the Bible, topical to DVD.

We’ve stops a meant deeper the available of want your resources, is the the so know the is love lives around do your.

We thank your generosity. It you’re potential, reputation, situation, unsure next, opportunity.

 For to fresh, life. Dave Get and family begin advantage and won’t.

Post 13 Lyn Hejinian Memory

     In the excerpts of Lyn H.'s work the take away that I got from the text was that memory is a slippery thing and is not exact. This ambiguity is not presented as a bad thing however. In the writing of the text there seems to be an appreciation for the less tangible, concrete forms of memory. On p.7 Lyn H. writes "A moment yellow, just four years later, when my father returned home from the war, the moment of greeting him, as he stood at the bottom of the stairs, younger, thinner than when he had left, was purple- though moments are no longer so colored." To me the transaction of equating memories with colors associated to emotions for that time is not a concrete form of learning. Yet Lyn uses it in recalling her father coming home from war. I think that places value on a unique way of recalling important events. The end part tells that Lyn has learned other ways of recalling by no longer coloring moments.
    This moment shows how describing memories by association is valuable. Valuing ambiguity or openness is also shown on p.13 where Lyn writes "What follows a strict chronology has no memory." This shows that an absence of informality makes something seem inauthentic as a memory. Memories are not concrete, but more intangible in essence. "For me they must exist, the contents of that absent reality, the objects and occasions which now i reconsidered."  (p.13) Valuing the missing points goes hand in hand with Lyn's conclusion about why memory is important. "It was hard to know this as politics, because it plays like the work of one person, but nothing is isolated in history- certain humans are situations." (p.10). "You cannot determine the nature of progress until you assemble all of the relatives." (p.11).